Category: Legal Research

Apple vs. Google, Bilski, Recession Ending?

Greetings,

Welcome to the latest installment of my LawLawLaw newsletter. 2010 is the 10th year of the newsletter, and for this issue, I’m going retro: plain text, no graphics. I’m also using MailChimp for delivery.

Over the years, LawLawLaw has morphed into my observations on trends in technology, IP law (trademarks, domain names, and patents), baseball (long story), and rock ‘n’ roll (longer story). I summarize stories from other sites and provide links. I’m good at spotting trends, connecting people on social networks, and a handful of other things.

I try to keep LawLawLaw short, relevant, and timely. It is published about quarterly. Feel free to forward this to anyone else who might be interested. Thanks!

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LawLawLaw 2010-01-29
Technology, Law, Baseball, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Etc.
=================================================================http://www.lawlawlaw.com is a periodic publication of Clock Tower Law
Group. The opinions in LawLawLaw do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Clock Tower Law Group, its employees, or the author.
Feel free to forward this to any colleague who might enjoy this
newsletter. Please direct content or subscription questions toinfo@clocktowerlaw.com. Thanks!
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— TECHNOLOGY STUFF ——————————————–

Google launched at least three new products: court opinions on Google Scholar, tracking ordinary websites in Google Reader, and Google Public DNS. I prefer to rely on Google for those products that I pay for, such as Google Apps for business (which we use at my firm). I love Google Reader, but I’d feel better if I could pay for it, if there were a quid pro quo, and if there were a corresponding support phone number where I could reach humans. Google doesn’t have the best reputation for customer support, especially for free products.

Apple, on the other hand, has a great reputation for customer support. They launched the iPad and corresponding iBooks store this week. Perhaps you heard about it. I think the latter may be more significant than the former, as Apple breathes life into one segment of old media.

Speaking of old media, Rupert Murdoch continues to be the poster child for Not Getting It as he tries to block Google and hide News Corp’s content behind a paywall. Yeah, that’ll work. And The New York Times has also boarded the failboat. See you online – not!

Dan Wallach’s article on software in dangerous places reminded me of a 2002 MIT Technology Review article on why software is so bad. Manufacturers of software products, unlike manufacturers of other products, have long been given a Mulligan on product liability. Why is this so? Should it be so? I don’t belive it will always be so. As some point, non-negotiated shrinkwrap and clickwrap “licenses” will be a thing of the past and softawre makers won’t be able to dislciam all liability just because their EULAs claim to do so. Calling a dog a cat doesn’t make the dog meow.

On 11/09/09, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Bilski case. Bilski involves business method patents and the court’s (still pending) ruling has the potential to bring massive change to patent law, including business method patents and software patents. Not all companies rely on intellectual property. Your company should be planning for the end of software patents. It should also be planning for the expansion of software patents. The ruling could go either way.